I just got a fairphone 5 yesterday after is was on sale and I finally decided the price was good for me.
Now, this is my first phone with an OLED display, but from what I heard, usually, burn-in/image retention is not that big of an issue with newer displays, especially not with brand-new phones.
But please correct me if i’m wrong about this.
Now, I have not set up the phone fully yet, but while doing a system update and staying on the update sreen for some minutes (with ca 60% brightness), I went back to the home screen and noticed that there was a ghost of the update screen text in the background which I could still read.
Now this gets less over time (e.g. 5 Minutes), but I could still make out some shapes after that (see attached photos taken right after switching back to the home screen, because you can’t make it out that well).
Now, I have not used a phone with an OLED display before, so I wanted to ask if this is just normal behaviour for the FP5 OLED display or if I may have a faulty one, in which case I would RMA the device before continuing more with the setup.
Although I don’t think this is already permanent burn it, as after waiting for a day, it seemed to be mostly gone from what I could tell, but after opening somethign with a gray background after being on the homescreen for a short while (30 sec), I could see ghosts of the shapes of the homscreen app icons.
I’m assuming that you still not be normal.
I think contacting the seller is the best idea in your situation.
The self-repair portal should in principle let you generate a RMA label automatically but I don’t know how it works for purchases outside the FP shop (that might depend on specific seller-FP arrangements).
So, I got a new device from the seller (sent back the old one) and I’m starting to think I might just be the issue as I think this display is behaving in the same way.
e.g. with display brightness at ~60%, I’m currently doing a software update (where you have white text on a black background), so I’m staying on that screen for a few minutes and when I go to the homescreen afterwards and look closely where the text was I can still see that shadow (at least partly) for about 2 Minutes.
Do I just have a wrong impression of OLED displays?
If I left my previous phone lying with a static screen for a few Minutes, I at least have never notices something like this.
For testing, I created an image with a dark blue background and white circles and ovals at “random” positions. For comparison I also had an image with the same dark blue background color and nothing else, so I could swipe over to that one.
I then left the device on that image (with the dots) until the display timeout of 5 minutes currently with about 60% display brightness (non-automatic).
Then after the display timed out and turned off, I turned it back on and swiped over to the image with just the background color.
There I could slightly see darker shadows where the circles and ovals where.
Note that this already happens after ~30 seconds, but slightly less strong.
Another person has confirmed with me that they also see the shadows.
I also asked a different person with a (different) phone that has an OLED screen and they could not reproduce this on their phone with the same test images, even at full brightness.
As this is now the case for two devices in a row, either they are from bad batches and both had an issue or this is a general issue with this screen, which you guys said was not the case.
I don’t know any other person with a FP 5 that I could compare against.
I think I will try to contact fairphone support tomorrow and see if they can tell me anything else.
